SLAGA Monthly Board Meeting Minutes

Minutes are recorded and posted here by the secretary.

St. Louis Area Geocaching Association

MEETING MINUTES 2019

5 December 2019 / 6:00 PM / Grant's View Branch

ATTENDEES

Steve Bromley, Carolyn Jaycox, Michael Smith, Melissa Pierce, Jan Salvaggio, David DeWitt, Kathy DeWitt, John Elfrank, Patricia Hutchison, Jason Jaycox, Bill Lange

Meeting called to order at 6:11pm.

Motion Called to approve October 2019 minutes by Steve, seconded by Michael.

Motion called to approve October 2019 treasurer's report by Carolyn, seconded by Michael.

Motion called to approve November 2019 treasurer's report by Michael, seconded by Carolyn.

Upcoming Events

• 2019 SLAGA Christmas Bash, GC8FRJT, is this Saturday December 7th. Location was moved from the original location at Kirkwood Community Center to Fuddruckers in Sunset Hills. Update on needs for the toy and food drive will be announced by the cache owner.
• Cachemas starts next week. There are two geocoins for the final bonus. $100 was allocated for the activity, $88.37 has been spent. Motion for reimbursement was made by Steve, seconded by Michael. 
  • Many thanks to John Elfrank and Pete Shaw for all the hard work.
• Slurpin’ Soup event is upcoming. At the request of the usual host SLAGA will be hosting. No date has been set at this time; usually held the second week of January. Caches for the event have been hidden; thank you to John and Laurie Elfrank. Event has not published yet. 
  • If event has not been published by the next weekend, December 13, the SLAGA geocaching account will do this.
• Winter Potluck, GC8FF4C, will be on January 25, 2020. Items needed for the event are:
  • Schedule of events from the officers 
  • Three-$10 gift cards for the geobingo 
  • Three gift cards, one-$20, one-$15, and one-$10, for the travel bug race
  • Raffle tickets for the 50/50
  • Water bottles 
    • This brought up a tangential conversation on some concerns brought up by other SLAGA members about finding other, more sustainable solutions.
• Winter in the Woods, February 1, 2020. Pop up tent is available thanks to Carolyn. Venue will be supplying us with two-8 foot tables and four chairs. Steve will bring swag.
• MOGA 2020 GC8F5PX is set for April 4, 2020. John gave updates on the progress thus far. 
  • Ammo cans have been picked up and dinner was provided for those that helped. 
  • MOGA has paid for and received the artwork. Will use this for t-shirts again. 
    • David will pass on his vendor information to Michael. David will also get the sizes, quantities, and the prices charged from last year to Michael as well. 
    • Plan is to do pre-orders at the Winter Potluck. 
  • Per conversations with the awards venue, we overpaid last year. We will be using them again this year and due to the overpayment, they have waived a deposit fee.

Ongoing Business

• Event checklist still needs some revisions. Will ask John to use this during the Winter Potluck for further input.
• Geocaching Merit Badge Skill Center appears to have stalled at this time.
• Award Coins are still unavailable at this time. Carolyn has contacted Geocaching.com with no response at this time about when they may be available again. Carolyn also reached out to Lisa from CacheAdvance about them. 
  • Idea to explore designing our own milestone award coins was brought up. Steve will reach out to Jesse Tuttle from AFK Geocaching to discuss pricing and simple designs of a 1,000 and 5,000 engravable coin. Possibly pins as well for the lower milestones. 
  • John will try reaching out to Geocaching.com about this as well. 
  • Milestones need to be turned in by December 15th in order to receive them by the Winter Potluck. Melissa will send out an email blast on Friday, December 6th.

New Business

• Travelbug race rules. There has been some discussion about this year's race. While the race is being conducted as per the rules that were set, SLAGA officers have been contacted by other members about how it is being done. 
  • A motion for an official vote to discontinue the travel bug race for at least one year was brought by Steve, approved by Carolyn, and seconded by Michael. We will re-examine in a year. 
  • Steve will also be talking to Mark Derr about this decision and the issues surrounding it. Mark is welcome to continue to do this activity on his own, however SLAGA will not be backing it for the next year.
• 20th Anniversary geocoins. We have been approached to design our own version of this coin. We will be doing this as per email discussions. 
  • We will order 125 coins in order to take advantage of the discount. 
  • We will be doing pre-sales on these starting with the 2019 Christmas Bash. 
  • At this point we will have three levels of presale: Premium members 1 coin individual, 2 for family at $12 each, Standard members up to 1 coin at $15 each, and the general public 1 coin for $20 each. 
  • Hoping to have the coins available by the spring picnic for pick up. Otherwise pick up at later events or will charge a $5 shipping and handling fee to mail.
• Community Celebration Event will be hosted by John on July 18, 2020 at the Riverside Pavilion at Cliff Cave Park. This will be in place of the summer picnic. 
  • SLAGA will pay for the park reservation.

Other Business

• GIFF was brought up by Michael. Location was great and had a good time overall. There was concern that the memorial section at the event was not well adressed. Suggestion was made to discuss with the event host, as well as future event hosts, in hopes to avoid this at future events.
• Boone’s Lick Road geotrail and geocoins. Responsibility of this has been passed on to Carolyn as she is in charge of the geocoins. David will get Carolyn the answers for the geotrail as well.
• Name tags for events were also brought up. We will be discontinuing the use of the ones we currently have. May do sticker name tags. Another option that was brought up was to buy the reusable name tags to sell for members. 
  • Steve will look into cost.

Motion to adjourn was called by Carolyn, seconded by Melissa at 8:14 pm. 

NEXT MONTH’S INFORMATION

6:00 pm, January 6th, 2020 at the St. Louis County Library Grant’s View Branch, 9700 Musick Avenue, St Louis MO